I doubt if a ghost could have been more terrible to me, up in those

lonely rooms in the long evenings and long nights, with the wind and the

rain always rushing by. A ghost could not have been taken and hanged on

my account, and the consideration that he could be, and the dread that

he would be, were no small addition to my horrors. When he was not

asleep, or playing a complicated kind of Patience with a ragged pack of

cards of his own,--a game that I never saw before or since, and in which

he recorded his winnings by sticking his jackknife into the table,--when

he was not engaged in either of these pursuits, he would ask me to

read to him,--"Foreign language, dear boy!" While I complied, he, not

comprehending a single word, would stand before the fire surveying me

with the air of an Exhibitor, and I would see him, between the fingers

of the hand with which I shaded my face, appealing in dumb show to

the furniture to take notice of my proficiency. The imaginary student

pursued by the misshapen creature he had impiously made, was not more

wretched than I, pursued by the creature who had made me, and recoiling

from him with a stronger repulsion, the more he admired me and the

fonder he was of me.

This is written of, I am sensible, as if it had lasted a year. It lasted

about five days. Expecting Herbert all the time, I dared not go out,

except when I took Provis for an airing after dark. At length, one

evening when dinner was over and I had dropped into a slumber quite

worn out,--for my nights had been agitated and my rest broken by fearful

dreams,--I was roused by the welcome footstep on the staircase. Provis,

who had been asleep too, staggered up at the noise I made, and in an

instant I saw his jackknife shining in his hand.

"Quiet! It's Herbert!" I said; and Herbert came bursting in, with the

airy freshness of six hundred miles of France upon him.

"Handel, my dear fellow, how are you, and again how are you, and again

how are you? I seem to have been gone a twelvemonth! Why, so I must have

been, for you have grown quite thin and pale! Handel, my--Halloa! I beg

your pardon."

He was stopped in his running on and in his shaking hands with me, by

seeing Provis. Provis, regarding him with a fixed attention, was slowly

putting up his jackknife, and groping in another pocket for something

else.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024